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Memories oe the Lost Cause 



STORIES AND ADVENTURES OF A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 

IN GENERAL R. E. LEE'S ARMY 

1861 TO 1865 

AND 

Ten Years in South America 

ITS RESOURCES, TRADE AND COMMERCE, AND BUSINESS 

AND SOCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH 

OTHER COUNTRIES 



1<it 




BY 

J. M. POLK 
AUSTIN, TEXAS 

A. D. 1905 




Fiice 25 Cents; 20 or More Copies, 20 Cents in Advance. 




J. M. POLK. 



Memories of the Lost Cause 



STORIES AND ADVENTURES OF A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 

IN GENERAL R. E. LEE'S ARMY 

1861 TO 1865 

AND 

Ten Years in South America 

ITS RESOURCES, TRADE AND COMMERCE, AND BUSINESS 

AND SOCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH 

OTHER COUNTRIES 



?K 



3I£ 



BY 

J. M. POLK 

AUSTIN, TEXAS 

A. D. 1905 



Copyright. 1905, 

BY 

J. M. POLK, 
Austin, Texas. 



Gift 



MEMORIES OF THE LOST CAUSE. 



STORIES AND ADVENTURES OF A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 

OF HOOD'S TEXAS BRIGADE, GENERAL LEE'S 

ARMY. 



Since the close of the war between the States, from 1861 to 1865. 
I have noticed and read with a great deal of interest letters and 
articles in books and newspapers abont the cause and results of 
that long and bloody struggle. As I took part in the conflict, I 
have thought for a long time that I would answer some of those 
letters, as I might be able to give some account of friends and 
relatives lost and almost forgotten. But it has been so long that 
many of the incidents are almost like a dream to me now. I am 
not well enough versed in the art of literature to write a book or 
for a newspaper. I have heard it thunder too often, have lost the 
use of my right arm, and I am generally out of fix. Then, I 
never professed to know much, for I was a private most of the 
time in a regiment of infantry and had no opportunity of know- 
ing anything except what happened near me. 

I was born in Greene county, Missouri, five miles east of Spring- 
field, in the year 1838. My father was a native of Maury county. 
Tennessee. I enlisted in the Confederate army in July, 1861, in 
Captain Winkler's company at Corsicana, Texas. From there T 
went to Virginia, and was attached to the Fourth Texas Infantry, 
Hood's Brigade, General Lee's army. My first introduction on 
a battlefield was at Seven Pines. This satisfied me that war was 
not what it had been pictured in books and newspapers, and that 
if we accomplished what we started out to do, it would be a dearly 
bought victory; but I supposed I would stay as long as any of 
them — I never was of a boasting disposition. It reminded me of a 
conversation I had with General Sam Houston before leaving 
Texas. The three Texas regiments had lost so many men by sick- 
ness and exposure that it was necessary to send back to Texas 
for recruits, and Captain Winkler and myself were on the way to 
Virginia with recruits for our company. It was in the month 



— 4— 

of April, 1862, when I met General Houston in the barber ship 
of the Fannin House in Houston. He looked at me a few min- 
utes and said: "Well, young man, I suppose you arc off for the 
war.*' "Yes, sir." He was on crutches, dressed in a long, loose 
sack coat, broad-brimmed hat and had the largest ring 1 ever saw 
on a man's ringer. "Well, I am too old now to be of any service 
to my country," he continued. "Texas people refuse to take my 
counsel; I can do them no good and God knows [ do not wish to 
do them any harm. I do not think our cause will justify the loss 
of so much life and property, but still if I wore able and they 
refused to go my way, I would go with them."' lie made some 
sarcastic remarks about Louis T. Wigfall which I do not remem- 
ber. After the battle of Seven Pines, our next move (that is. 
Whiting's division) was to join General Jackson in the valley of 
Virginia. We met him near Staunton, Va. We were all ignorant 
then about discipline in the army and thought wo had a right to 
know as much as the officers. But we soon found out different. 
General Whiting was an old army officer, and a good one. and he 
said to General Hood that be bad no doubt but what those Texas 
men would make good soldiers, "but you will have a hard time 
to get them down to army regulations." General Jackson was a 
good hand to execute and keep bis own counsel, and about the 
first thing he done was to give us to understand that we must 
know nothing but obey orders, and if any citizen on the march 
should ask us wtbare wteiare going, "tell them you don't know." The 
next day he came along and noticed one of our men leaving ranks 
for a cherry tree. Cherries were getting ripe. "Where are you 
going," said the general. "1 don't know, sir." "What regiment 
do you belong to?" "1 don't know, sir." "Wbat do you know?" 
"I know General Jackson said we must not know anything till 
after the fight's over." "Is that all you know?" "I know that I 
want to go to that cherry tree." "Well, go on." The next day 
he came along and one of our men says to him: "General, where 
are we going?" He turned around ami looked at him a few 
minutes and said : "Are you a good band to keep a secret?" "Yes, 
sir." "Well, so am I"; and rode on. Then it was a forced march 
to the rear of McClellan's army, which we reached about the 2511) 
of June, and on the 27th of .June. L862, was fought the memor- 
able battle of Gaines' Mil] and the Seven Days battle near Rich- 



— 5— 

mond. The whole country knows the result. At Gaines' Mill our 
regiment, the Fourth Texas, lost its colonel and lieutenant col- 
onel and the major was wounded, which left us without a field 
officer. It was reported that we lost about three hundred killed 
and wounded. I was one of the wounded, hut unless a man was 
killed on the field or lost a leg or an arm, it was only consid- 
ered a furlough, so I got a furlough and I missed the second bat- 
tle of Manassas by about three days, and I never did regret it. 
I was wounded in the arm, and it swelled to about the size of a 
ztove pipe, turned as black as a pot, and the doctors thought for 
a while that it would have to be amputated. All the other regi- 
ments (.f the brigade and division lost heavily, but not so much as 
the Fourth Texas, because it seemed to me we were right in front 
of the Federal batteries supported by infantry. It was reported 
that our company lost twenty-nine killed and wounded, but I 
can not now remember all their names. The first man killed in 
Winkler's company was named Fondron, and his people lived in 
Young county, Texas. I was within five feet of him; he dropped 
his gun and said, "Oh, Lord !" and fell within about fifty steps of 
the battery. The first man killed in the regiment was Jim Smy- 
lev. from Kobertson county, Texas. We were then about twelve 
or fourteen hundred yards from the battery. He was struck by a 
shell. About that time General Hood gave the command, "For- 
ward, guide center, march, give way to the right, give way to the 
left ; watch your colors, men !" Now, that is the last command 
you hear in going into a hard-fought battle. Then it is every fellow 
for himself and the devil for all, and the man with the musket 
does the balance. We carried the position, but with heavy loss. 
Captain Hutchison, from Navasota, was killed on the field, Cap- 
tain Ryan from Waco, Captain Porter from Huntsville, and Bob 
Lambert from Austin all died in the same room in Richmond, and 
I suppose I am one of the last men that saw them alive. Rich- 
mond was crowded with wounded men. I went down to the Chim- 
berazo Hospital and found Jim Treadwell, Mat Beasley and. I 
think, Jim Shaw, all wounded. I secured a carriage and took 
them to the Catholic Hospital, where they received better atten- 
tion, and all recovered. Jim Treadwell was a great oddity. He 
was shot in the instep of the foot; he said in all seriousness that 
he had just put on a new pair of shoes that day and that the shot 



— 6— 

ruined the shoe. When Captain Winkler was entering his name 
on the muster rolls, he asked Jim his native State. Jim said he 
was born in Cowita county, Ga., but that he stopped thirty-six 
years in Texas to fatten his horse, went to California in '49 and 
was a ranger on the frontier of Texas several years. I was in- 
formed that Dick Wade was badly wounded, but 1 could not learn 
where he was. I put in two days in search of him and finally 
found him in a box oar in Manchester, opposite Richmond, from 
which place I took him to the Catholic Hospital. Dick is now liv- 
ing at Wootan Wells, Falls county, Texas; Mat Beasley in Na- 
varro county, Texas, and Jim Treadwell died in East Texas nine 
or ten years ago. I do not know what became of Jim Shaw, it has 
been so long I have almost forgotten him. 

About the 1st of September, 1862, as well as I qan remember, 
Jim Aston of Winkler's company and myself started out from 
Richmond to overtake the army. When we reached Rapidan Sta- 
tion, as far as we could go on the railroad, we heard that there 
had been another fight at Manassas. The next day we started out 
on foot. We soon began to meet the sick, barefooted and wounded 
that could walk, and prisoners, some of the latter negroes. When 
we reached Warrenton I found Tom Morris and Bill Spence of 
our company in the hospital, both mortally wounded. I gave them 
$10, all the money I had, and left them and never saw them again. 
Their people lived in Navarro county, Texas. We traveled to 
Leesburg, then to Point of Rocks on the Potomac, twelve miles 
1 think, and crossed it between midnight and day. The river was 
only about waist-deep and we had no trouble in reaching the other 
side. We had had nothing to eat for nearly two days, and we held 
a little consultation, as we were then in the State of Maryland 
and did not know how the people would treat us. We concluded 
to try some of the citizens for breakfast, so I started to a house 
about a half mile from the road and Jim followed along behind 
me. When I reached the house the woman came out and I asked 
her if she would give us some breakfast. I told her that we had 
had nothing to eat for two days and that we were hungi-y. She 
said to come in. We went into the kitchen and sat down at the 
table. She put out the buttermilk, light bread, butter and coffee, 
and when we were done we thanked her, but when we started to 
leave we found that we were so heavilv "loaded" that we could 



—7— 

hardly walk. We traveled on, I don't remember the distance, but 
found General Lee's army near Frederick City, Md. We remained 
there two or three days and then started in the direction of Hagers- 
town, Md. When we reached Boonsboro we had another fight. The 
next day we moved on and soon heard the cannonading at Har- 
per's Ferry, and when we reached Sharpsburg we heard that Gen- 
eral Jackson had taken the place with ten thousand men and all 
the garrison. I could see General Lee a short distance from the 
road. He was on foot and Colonel Chilton, I think, was with him. 
General Lee was a short, heavy-set man, with iron-gray hair and 
the largest head I ever saw. He carried his arm in a sling, as it 
had been injured by his horse falling with him at Manassas. The 
Federal army was close behind us and I could see from the move- 
ments that we would soon have another bloody conflict. About 
that time the sergeant ordered me to go back to the banks of the 
Antietam, on the picket line. I remained there all day and after 
dark returned to my command, which was located near the old 
Dunkard Church. 

The next morning a small amount of bacon and flour was issued. 
I was trying to cook some bread; I took the ramrod out of my 
gun, wet up the flour without grease or salt, wrapped it around 
the ramrod, and was holding it over the fire when a shell from 
one of the Federal batteries fell, bursting near me, and break- 
ing a man's leg. In less time than it takes to tell it, we formed 
in line of battle and the command was given to "forward." Our 
ranks were so reduced that regiments looked like companies and 
brigades like regiments; and this was about the condition of Gen- 
eral I^ee's army on that day. I don't remember the date, but it 
was between the 12th and 20th of September, 1862. Some were 
in hospitals sick or wounded, some discharged, some dead. The 
Federals must have had about three or four to our one, and it was 
as near a knock-down and drag-out as anything I have ever seen 
or heard of. The air was full of shot and shell and we were in 
an open field with no protection and it seemed almost impossible 
for a rat to live in such a place. The dead and dying were in 
every direction. I heard that the 1st Texas regiment lost nineteen 
color-bearers and finally lost their colors. I didn't take time to 
load my gun, for there were plenty of loaded guns lying on the 
ground by the side of the dead and wounded men, and thev were 



— 8— 

not all Confederates; the Blue and the Grey were all mixed up. 
The New Jersey men were in front of us; this I found out the 
next day, after Generals Lee and McClellan had agreed upon a 
cessation of hostilities in order to take care of the dead and 
wounded. I saw a great many men go in that day who never came 
out, but it has been so long that I do not remember their names, 
not even the members of my own company. I saw Milt Garner 
go in but never saw him again. Re was an old friend and neighbor 
of mine and hit* people now live in Navarro county, Texas. I can 
remember a little fellow by the name of Paul. I was on picket 
with him the day before. He was the only Jew I ever saw in the 
army, and belonged to Martin's company, from Henderson county, 
Texas, but I never saw Paul any more. I can remember that all 
that was left of our company, out of over 100, after we came out 
of that fight, was Captain Winkler, Lieutenant Mills and eight 
men. We had hardly stacked our guns, when" a. shell from one of 
the Federal batteries exploded near us, knocked the guns down 
and came very near killing the balance of us. I could not help 
but think how different this was from the way it was pictured out 
to us in war speeches at the commencement. It reminded me of 
what one of our men by the name of Brooks told me. He said he 
was on the picket line with an Irishman. The Federals outnum- 
bered them and they knew it, and it began to be a serious matter. 
So Mike said to the captain: "We must be getting away from 
here. They will kill us all." "No, you must stand your ground, 
Mike," said the captain. "If you should happen to be killed here, 
there would lie a great big monument erected to your memory. 
with great big letters on it, 'Sacred to the memory of Mike Dono- 
hue, who died in defense of his country.' " "Yes, and be Jasus 
and it might stand here one hundred years," said Mike, "and I 
would never read a word of it, sir." 

The next day I went out with the litter bearers among the dead 
and wounded near the old stone church. The first man I noticed 
was a wounded Federal soldier. He made motions for me to come 
to him. He asked me if I would give him some water. He said 
he had been lying there twenty-four hours and was nearly dead 
from thirst. My canteen was full, as well as I can remember, 
and I handed it to him. I think he drank it all or most of it. 
He then said he felt better and that he could not have lived much 



— 9— 

longer without water. I think he said he --beltthged to the Thir- 
teenth New Jersey, and had been in the army only about two 
weeks. He said he was a shoemaker by trade,' and supported him- 
self, mother and sister, but now he was crippled and did not know 
what would become of them or whether he would ever see them 
again. About that time my attention was attracted to the litter- 
bearers trying to move a man that had been killed the day before. 
There was a dog lying beside him, and every time they started 
toward the man, the dog would jump at them and growl; he 
thought the man was only asleep. They were meditating about 
what to do — to move the man they would have to kill the dog. I 
started toward them, and in passing a tree I heard a minnie ball 
strike the tree, and one of the litter-bearers cried, "Drop that 
gun. We are under a white flag here. You ought not to come 
out here with a gun.'* Well, it didn't take me long to drop that 
gun. The best friend to man is the dog, next is the horse, and 
many a poor horse loses its life trying to serve the man. 

That night, between midnight and day, we crossed the Potomac. 
We traveled on about two miles and lay down beside the road. 
About daylight we heard the roar of artillery and musketry lie- 
hind us. From this we knew that the Federals were following us. 
We soon learned that General Jackson had stationed his men on 
the south side of the river, and when the Federals began to cross, 
he gave them a lot of dead and wounded to take care of. We had 
no more trouble with them for a while. We traveled on, and when 
we reached Front Royal we had another fight, and there we lost 
Captain Woodward of the First Texas, who came from Palestine. 
Texas. 

We traveled on. and one day halted on the side of the road to 
rest. Bill Fuller had just come in with some whisky. He was an 
old man, and the captain never tried to control him. He would 
always go into a fight, but he was never very particular about 
keeping up on a march or staying in camp. Often he would try 
to borrow General Hood's horse to go to town to pick up stragglers. 
The artillery and wagons were passing, and Bill was having some- 
thing to say to everybody, and we were all laughing at him. About 
that time. General Hood and his staff came along, and Bill jumped 
up and gave him a salute, and said : "Early camps tonight, Gen- 
eral, and plenty of meat and bread." "Sir,'' replied General 



—10— 

Hood, "we will stop ,about a mile and a half from here." "If it's 
all the same with you. General," says Bill, "leave ouit the 'about,' 
and tell us how far it is, for we are awful hungry and tired." Cap- 
tain Winkler was a good-natured kind of a man, and I never 
heard him utter a profane word, but he was out of patience with 
Bill. He turned around to us and said: "You confounded fel- 
lows, I am trying to quiet the man, and you all are encouraging 
him. I'll have the last one of you arrested if you don't let him 
alone. Fuller, if you don't dry up I will have you put in the 
guard house as soon as we stop." "All right, captain," replied 
Bill, "I am either on guard or under guard all the time and it's 
all the same with me, sir." Bill died about two years ago in 
Wharton county, Texas; he was totally Mind and his hair was as 
white as cotton. Captain King had agreed to take him into the 
Confederate Home, but it was too late. When I wrote to him 
to come to Austin, that Sam Billingsley and myself would sign 
his papers, his family answered and said he had been dead about 
three weeks. 

We were now on the south hank of the Kappahanock, near 
Fredericksburg, and many of the men who had been sick and 
wounded came in. The Federal army was on the north bank. 
They tried to cross and drive us south, and there we had another 
fight, but most of it was in the front of General Jackson. It was 
about this time that the Fighteenth Georgia left us and went to 
some other department. They were a gallant set of men and 
called themselves the Third Texas. We regretted to see them go. 
hut the Third Arkansas took their place — a regiment of good men. 

It is now December and there is plenty of snow, and it is very 
cold. Captain Keilly and some of the other officers called out the 
men for a snow-ball fight. There must have been at least ten 
thousand men engaged in the battle. Snow flew in every direc- 
tion. Eeilly's battery was attached to Hood's Brigade. Captain 
Reilly was on his borse and had the appearance of a "Lager Beer 
Dutchman." The men piled snow upon him until it was almost 
impossible to tell the color of his horse, but still he seemed to 
enjoy the sport. The next day we. went down on the banks of the 
Kappahanock on picket. The Federals were on the opposite side. 
We sat there and talked to them all day. .One of them said, "Boys, 
can't you throw me over some tobacco?" "All right," was the 



—11— 

answer. "Throw us over some late papers, and we'll throw you 
some tobacco." This we did by tying a rock to it, but General 
Lee soon heard of this and stopped it. We had to do something; 
some of the men played cards, some chuck-a-luck. We organized 
a court martial to try some of the men. We were reminded that 
when the fight commenced at Manassas they were issuing rations, 
and i<t was necessary to detail two men from each company to take 
the bacon and crackers and go to the rear. Jordan and Warren 
started to the rear for our company, and when they were about a 
half mile off, where the shells from the Federal batteries would 
fall and explode, they pulled for tall timber and it was nearly two 
days before they joined the company. Bob Crawford was the mar- 
shal, George Foster was the attorney, and I was the judge advo- 
cate. Warren's case was called and it was decided to ride him on 
a pole, which was done; but he soon jumped off, with his butcher 
knife in his hand, and the boys had all they could do to keep out 
of his reach. All this time Jordan was sitting down before the 
fire whittling, apparently indifferent as to what was going on. 
When his name was called I proposed to the court that before we 
proceed with the regular order of business that we question Mr. 
Jordan and see whether or not he was in his right mind when he 
ran off with the meat. George Foster tapped him on the shoulder 
and said: "Come, Ira; you hear what the judge says?" Jordan 
turned around in an indifferent kind of way and replied: "Now 
look here boys, enough of anything is enough. I am in my right 
mind now, and if you fellows fool with me I'll stick my knife 
in some of you." Of course, when he said this, the men all 
whooped and yelled, and some of the officers hearing them, inter- 
fered and broke up the court. 

We soon started south (that is, Longstreet's corps), and left 
Generals Lee and Jackson in command of the position. We 
stopped near Ashland, twenty-seven miles north of Richmond. 
Snow was on the ground, and it was very cold. John Duran and 
Bob Holloway had just come in. They were in a fine talking 
humor. I think they found some apple-jack somewhere, for they 
were full of new ideas. It was after dinner; John said, "Jerry, 
I am hungry, I want something to eat." "Well, John," replied 
Jerry, "the boys eat everything up." "The devil, you say; where 
are my peas?" "I cooked them and they eat them." "That's a 



—12— 

devil of a tale to tell. I carried them peas forty miles, and now 
I come in hungry, nearly starved, and. not a pea left." I will not 
mention the balance he said, for it would not be very edifying to 
church people. Jerry Caddell, Jack Hill and Stokes were killed 
in the ditches at Petersburg. While there, General Lee and his 
staff came along with an instrument trying to make a calculation 
of the distance to the Federal batteries, and one of our men said 
to them, "Mister, how far can you see through that thing?" "Oh, 
I can see a long ways," was the reply. "Well," I wish you would 
look through that thing and tell us how far it is to the end of this 
war." 

We left Ashland and traveled on to Eichmond. Snow had been 
falling all the time. Some of the men were almost barefooted, and 
as they traveled they left blood in their tracks. We didn't know 
where we were going or what we were going to do. I supposed 
we were going to have another killing, but I didn't think many of 
us were fat enough for market. We traveled on from Eichmond 
to Petersburg; snow was still falling. We were cold and hungry, 
but we felt that we needed rest and sleep more than anything else. 
When we stopped we raked away the snow, spread our blankets 
and bunked up three and four together. The next morning we 
were covered with snow. At roll call two of our men were miss- 
ing, Harris and Terrell. About 10 o'clock in the day somebody 
stepped on them ; they were covered with snow about ten inches 
deep. We cleared away the snow and raised the old tent cloth 
and then the blankets, then a puff of smoke went up into the air. 
and there they lay, sound asleep. We remained at Petersburg a 
few days and then moved on, finally stopping near Suffolk, on the 
Nanceman river. Here we lost Captain Turner of the Fifth Texas, 
and Terrell of our company, Irving «to take a gunboat. 

There was a line of rifle pits about two hundred and fifty yards 
in front of the Federal batteries. There was a call for volunteers 
to go into these pits ; I was one to volunteer. We had to go in at 
night and come out at night; ten or twelve men in a pit and a 
bundred and twenty-five rounds of cartridges to each man. Now, 
these breastworks in front of us had barrels, filled with sand, on 
top of them, with just enough room between them for a musket, 
and when we could not see daylight between the barrels of sand 
that was the time to shoot. T don't remember now whether it 



—13— 

was my first or second day in the pit, but it was about 3 o'clock 
in the evening when one of the Federals shot at me, struck my hat 
brim, and took a small piece off my right ear ; this was a close call, 
but a miss is as good as a mile. We were watching them carry 
some fellow away on a litter when one of our men cried : "Look- 
out, hoys; that old cannon will go off directly." We just had time 
to back ourselves up against the front side of the pit when boom 
went the cannon, and a shell about the size of a lamp post burst 
a little in front of us. A piece of it struck the back part of my hat 
brim and shaved the breast of my jacket — another close call. An- 
other piece struck the ground about ten feet in front of the pit. 
digging a. hole deep enough to bun* a horse, and rolling about 
two wagon-loads of dirt in on us. I can remember that we had to 
rake the dirt off a man named Holms. T never saw a man more 
excited than be was; he thought we were all dead. As for myself, 
I never thought I would live to see the sun go down. I don't re- 
member of ever seeing Holms again, as he belonged to a different 
company, but I am satisfied it is the last time he ever volunteered 
to go into a rifle pit within two hundred and fifty yards of the 
batteries. It settled it with me; I thought if I did what I was 
ordered to do after that, that would be enough. T think we left 
Suffolk during March or April, 1863, and went back to Peters- 
burg and Richmond, and then went north and joined General Lee 
somewhere on the Rappahanock. Then the whole army, with 
Stuart's cavalry, started north. We all knew we would, soon have 
another big killing. 

Nothing of importance happened on the march ; plenty of rain, 
creeks all up and a hard time on the gray-hacks. Not many young 
men of this generation know what a gray-back is, but if they had 
been in General Lee's army one month without changing their 
clothing they would know the meaning of the word. General 
Jackson had gone to his long home and General A. P. Hill took 
bis place. We crossed the Potomac river at Williamsport. Md., on 
the 26th of June, 1863. Here we took a lot of government stores 
from the Federals, and among other things a lot of whisky. It 
was rolled out on the hill, the. heads knocked out of the barrels, 
and issued to men by the cup full. I don't suppose the oldest 
man living in America ever saw as many drunk men at any one 
time. It was all the officers could do to hold them down; they 



—14— 

were full of new ideas. Colonel Manning of the Third Arkansas 
was very strict with his men, and he tried to carry out army reg- 
ulations. "Take that man and dip him in the creek," he com- 
manded. "Now set him up on his feet and see if he can walk." 
The man staggered a little and fell down. "Dip him in again." 
All the other officers had all they could do to keep the men from 
fighting. 

We traveled on and stopped at Gieencastle, Pa. General Lee 
issued orders to the men not to leave their commands, as they were 
now in the enemy's country, and not to depredate on the citizens. 
We traveled on through Chambersburg ; the houses were all closed 
and the women waved the Stars and Stripes at us. We moved on 
a short distance and then stopped and struck camp. The people 
here were all Dunkards. They seemed to think more of their stock 
than they did of themselves; they had a very fine barn, but lived 
in a very ordinary looking house. I was put on guard at one of 
these houses, and stood at the gate all day to keep the men from 
depredating on them. A woman called me in to dinner, which 
was one of the finest meals T ever sat down to. The old lady re- 
marked : "Oh. this cruel war! I just wish you men with your 
muskets could get them big fellows in a ring and stick your bayo- 
nets in them and make them fight it out. You could settle it in a 
few minutes." I was young then and had never given the sub- 
ject a sober thought, but since. 1 have often thought of that old 
woman's remarks. Of course, we all know now, for we have some 
experience in war, that if all the leadera and men who make war- 
speeches and excite the people, knew that in case of war they 
would have to pick up their gun and help to fight the battles and 
take their chances along with the men, there would not be many 
wars. They would adopt Dr. Franklin's plan — raise the money 
and pay for the territory or property in question rather than go 
to war. 

We traveled on and soon heard cannonading and knew that the 
ball had opened. Late in the afternoon we heard that our column 
had had a fight with the Federals. This was the first day's fight 
at Gettysburg. I always thought it was on the 2d of July, but in 
order to agree with everybody else T will call it the 1st. of July, 
1863. By sun-up the next day we passed over the battle-ground 
and saw the dead and wounded, and we could see our artillery in 



—15— 

front of us, all unlimbered and in battle array; flags flying and 
men going in every direction. About 4 o'clock in the afteroon, 
I understand, we were on the right of General Lee's army; the 
line of battle was seven miles long. Sam Miller and I left the 
ranks to get canteens of water for our company, and I never saw 
Sam any more until the war was over; he was captured and sent 
to Fort Delaware. Mat Beasley was ordered to take Captain Por- 
ters old company, from Huntsville, into the fight. They had 
never gone into a fight and came out with a captain or lieutenant. 
We all gathered around Mat and said to him, "Good-bye, you are 
gone now." Bob Crawford said : "I am sorry for you, but I 
can't help you any." He was the only captain that ever came out 
alive with that company. Moving slowly we entered a valley in a 
wheat field. We could see the Federals on the hills to our left, 
and the Stars and Stripes waving at us. About this time a shell 
from the Federal batteries came along th rough our lines and cut 
a man's head off ; his name was Floyd, from San Antonio ; I was 
within about forty steps of him. Just then the command was 
given to "forward !" It was 300 or 400 yards to the foot of the 
hill, on which bordered a rock fence. When we were forty or 
fifty steps from this fence, the Federal batteries on the hill turned 
loose at the fence with solid slbot, and rocks were flying in every 
direction. This scattered our men; many of them were killed, 
wounded and captured. We were right in front of the battery. 
No time for shining shoes. So great was the confusion that 1 
have no recollection of passing over the fence. I can remember 
when I was about half way up the hill I stopped behind a big 
rock to load my gun; I could see Captain Reilly's battery a little 
to our right, and he was cleaning off the top of that hill. There 
was a solid blaze of fire in front of bis battery. Right here, as 
well as I can remember. Bill Smith fell: he was a son of Tom 1. 
Smith, an old pioneer, after whom Smith county, Texas, was 
named, lie left his wife with her father, W. H. Mitchell, at the 
head of Richland mid Chamber's creek, ten miles west of Millford. 
Ellis county, Texas, and never saw her any more, and I doubt if 
she ever knew what became of him. When we reached the battery 
at the top of the hill, the men had all left. Some dead were lying 
around, I don't remember how many. Harris of our company was 
in front of me. He put his hand on the cannon and was looking 



—16— 

over the hill. The cannon was lying on a rock, I think, and the 
wheels behind the rock. I could hear the minnie balls going over 
our heads. 1 said to him : "Hold on, Harris, we are by ourselves; 
wait till the balance come up." "Oh, I want to see where they 
have gone," replied Harris, "they are not far off." About that 
time a shell burst in front of us and a piece of it went through 
his breast, and it seemed to me that I could run my arm through 
that man's body. His face turned as white as cotton, and strange 
to say, he turned around and tried to walk in that condition, but 
fell over and was dead in less than five mnutes. His people lived 
somewhere in Virginia, but I don't know their address. Now I 
could see the Third Arkansas to our left, and could hear Colonel 
Manning's voice; then I saw three or four hundred Federals throw- 
down their guns and surrender to them. I saw General Hood 
walking down the hill holding his arm. 1 understood his arm was 
broken above the elbow and four inches of the bone taken out. By 
daylight the next morning we had a line of battle on top of that 
hill; we lay there all day. About 12 o'clock in the day. 1 heard 
firing in our rear. I saw a house on fire, and thought we were 
surrounded and would be captured, but I soon learned that a 
regiment of Federal cavalry was trying to destroy General Lee's 
ammunition train, which was protected by two regiments of in- 
fantry. The Federals succeeded until they were right in among 
the wagons, then the infantry closed in on them, and I don't think 
a man escaped ; the colonel refused to surrender, and shot himself. 
Then commenced an artillery duel. General Lee had two hun- 
dred and twenty-five pieces of artillery, and he turned all of it 
Loose on the Federal lines, and 1 suppose the Federals had as 
many or more to reply with. Just imagine what a thundering 
noise all these cannon made, all firing, you might say at once, 
to say nothing about the loss of life and property! I never did 
believe that any man knewt the number of armed men engaged on 
both sides at the Rattle of Gettysburg, hut I will give it as my 
opinion, from what I could see and hear, there must have been, 
all told. Federals and Confederates, at least 175,000 men. and 
the number of killed, wounded and captured, on both sides, be- 
tween 40,000 and 45,000 men. It has been forty years now, and 
I don't remember the names of my own eompany that were lost, 
much less the army. We lost our lieutenant colonel. Carter, of 



—17— 

the Fourth Texas, and I heard that Hood's Brigade lost 500 or 
600 men. About 3 or 4 o'clock in the evening of the third day 
at Gettysburg we were still in line of battle on the hills; I don't 
know enough about the country to say whether it was Cemetery 
Ridge, Little Round Top or what it was. The Federals made a 
charge and our left gave way. We fell back in the valley and 
formed in line of battle. I heard the cavalry horses and the horns. 
"Look out, boys!" some one shouted; "get ready for a cavalry 
charge." But for some reason they never came. 1 suppose their 
prudence and judgment got the best of them. I know nothing 
about the cavalry service, but I know it's a hard matter to get a 
lot of cavalry to charge a line of infantry. They know it's a 
serious matter, for many of them will go to their long homes when 
they try it. It began to get dark and commenced raining. The 
sergeant ordered me to go back on the side of the mountain on 
picket; Lieutenant Mills of our company was with us. Lieutenant 
Pugh Fuller, Fifth Texas, from Houston, and I sat down on a 
big rock. We were compelled to keep up a strong picket line all 
night. Dead men were all around us, and it rained all night. 
It was as dark as a nigger's pocket. I was sleepy, hungry and 
tired. I could feel the gray-backs moving around. I knew it 
would take a dose of red pepper occasionally and somebody to 
stick pins in me all night to keep me awake, but it would not do 
to go to sleep here. Between midnight and day I was nearly dead, 
completely exhausted. I lost all feeling of fear or duty and be- 
gan to nod a little. Lieutenant Mills came along and tapped me 
on the shoulder and said : "Don't go to sleep here." But if I 
had known that I would be shot the next minute, it would have 
been all the same with me. But Mills was an old neighbor and 
friend, and he said nothing about it, but it would have been a 
serious matter with me if he had reported me. At daylight Gen- 
eral Lee's army moved off and left the battlefield of Gettysburg. 
About 8 or 9 o'clock he came riding along, and the men began 
to wave their hats and dheer him. He simply raised his hat, rode 
along, and said nothing. He was plain, simple and unassuming 
in his manners, and never encouraged anything of this kind. We 
all wanted to show to him that we had not lost confidence in him, 
and he understood it that way. General Lee was a man who had but 
little to say to anybody. He always looked to me like he was griev- 



—18— 

ing about the want of men and means to carry out his plans. Pat- 
rick Henry defines it as "the illusions of hope, looking for something 
that we have lost and hope for, but may never find.'' About this 
time a copy of Harper's Weekly has a picture of General Eobert 
E. Lee, and says that, "Although he was educated at the expense 
of the government he is now trying to destroy; he is looked 
upon by the eyes of the world as master of the arts of war." 

We passed through Hagerstown between midnight and day, 
crossed the Potomac and went down through Virginia to Rich- 
mond; there we shipped for Bragg's army. We stopped at Well- 
don, N. C, which is a junction of railroads ; here there were a lot 
of North Carolina men on another train going south. There must 
have been a thousand barrels of resin on the ground, and we began 
to throw resin at the tar-heels. One of them asked: "Have you 
got any good tobacco?" "No," we replied, "but we have one of 
the best chaws of resin ever you saw." About that time we could 
hear their guns click-click-click. It was all the officers could do 
to stop it; if they hadn't intervened there would have been blood 
shed right there. We started west and traveled north through 
North Carolina. The train was heavily loaded and we traveled 
slow. Some of us were on top of the cars; one fellow playing a 
fiddle, another fellow dowu'in the car blowing a horn, all happy 
as lords, yet knowing at the same time that we were going right 
into another big killing and that many of us would go to our long 
homes. We traveled to Atlanta, Ga., and then to a point near 
Dalton. 

It was Thursday afternoon, September 16, 1863; rations were 
issued to us and we commenced cooking. We could hear cannon- 
ading, but it was a long way off. We soon received orders to make 
preparations to move, and we traveled all that night. The next 
day, Friday, about 10 o'clock, we ran into some Federal cavalry, 
and knocked some of them off their horses; some of our men se- 
cured some new cavalry hats, but they afterward lost them at the 
night fight at Missionary Ridge. Bill Calhoun, Fourth Texas, 
from Austin, came into camp with an old cap on. "Bill, where 
is your hat?" asked one of the boys. "Oh, it belonged to a gen- 
tleman from Iowa," answered Bill, "and he came after it." We 
traveled all day Friday, halting some time during the night. 
Saturday morning we continued our march, and about 3 o'clock 



—19— 

in the afternoon of tihe 17th or 18th of September, 1863, we were 
near the center of the Federals' line of battle. The booming of 
cannon and roaring of musketry commenced on both sides. We 
moved up in line of battle; Cheatham's division (Tennessee 
troops), I think, were in front of us, and I understand there were 
two lines behind us, Cleburne's and Hindman's, making four lines 
of battle in front of the Federals. We were ordered to halt and 
lie down. Shot and shell were coining through the woods from 
the Federal batteries; Cheatham's men coming out wounded in 
every way. Occasionally an artilleryman came out with his swab 
on his shoulder, showing that he had lost his battery. About this 
time two negroes met near me, one going in, the other coming out. 
The one coming out said : "Where you gwine ?" "I am gwine 
to carry Captain (somebody) his dinner/' the negro answered. 
"'You are the biggest fool nigger I ever saw. Dat man's dead. I 
spect I don't know what the white folks thinking about, nohow; 
the way they are killin' one another now, there won't be nobody 
left, and I don't know what they want with the country after 
everybody is dead." At this moment a shell from the Federal 
batteries came along, cutting the timber down in front of it. The 
two negroes dropped to the ground filled with terror. "Now, 
just look at dat !" continued one of the negroes. "Any man or 
set of men dat will shoot such things as dat at folks, and den talk 
about Christianity, dey is got no raisin' and is black-hearted. Just 
look how de men is coram' out shot 1 ': You just ought to be up 
yonder where I'se been; some of them on de ground hurt so bad 
they can't walk, some dead ; don't talk to me 'bout war. I done 
seen enough now." About the time he finished saying this an- 
other shell came whizzing along. "Look here !" he cried, "we'd 
better get away from here; dar's gwine to be some dead niggers 
right here." And that was the last I saw of them. 

Of course. I knew we would soon be ordered into the fight and 
that some of us would never come out. I walked up to Tobe Riggs, 
of our company. He had never missed a battle or roll call. He 
was a cousin of mine. He had been having chills and looked bad. 
"Tobe," I said to him, "you ought not to go into this figlht; the 
doctor will excuse you." "Oh, I'm all right," he replied. I could 
say no more. Just then the command was given: "Attention, cap 
your pieces, forward, guide center, mareh ; give way to the right, 



—20— 

give way to the left." When we readied Cheatham's line, about 
two hundred and fifty yards distant, we found them in the edge of 
an old field. They were all behind trees, but so many of them had 
been killed and wounded that it looked more like a picket line than 
a line of battle. They yelled for joy when they saw us coming; 
they expected to all be killed right there. We did not take time to 
exchange compliments. As well as 1 can remember, the Federal 
lines were about two hundred and fifty yards off, and we made no 
halt, but passed through Cheatham's lines, and I think they joined 
us, and as soon as the Federals discovered our approach they gave 
us a salute by waving the Stars and Stripes at us, in order to ridi- 
cule the idea of us coming toward them. Then they emptied their 
guns at us, and it seems that every third or fourth man in our line 
was cut down. Billie Carroll and Tobe Biggs both fell not over 
five or six feet from me. We lost Dock Childers and Chisum Wal- 
ker, but they did not fall so near me; but all four of them were of 
Winkler's old company, from Corsicana, Texas. I suppose it we 
had stopped there and given the Federals time to reload their 
guns, they would have killed the rest of us; but we moved on to 
them with loaded guns. We broke their lines; I don't know 
what their loss was, but there were dead and wounded Federal 
soldiers in every direction. After we broke through their line I 
ran back to see What had become of Biggs. I found that his leg 
was broken at the knee joint. Billie Carroll, who was lying near 
Biggs, was dead. I lifted Tobe up on his feet; of course, it was 
painful. His face was as white as cotton. I found Abe Bogers, 
of Martin's company, from Henderson county, Texas near Tobe; 
he was shot in the instep of his foot, and was making a great 
deal more noise than Tobe. I placed him up on his feet and 
walked between him and Tobe some two or three hundred yards, 
and turned them over to Dr. Jones, surgeon of the Fourth Texas 
regiment, and never saw them any more. I went back and joined 
my company, bait the Federals had disappeared. I sat down be- 
side a wounded Indiana man, and he asked me for some water. 
I gave him my canteen and talked to him a few minutes. There 
was a dead man lying near him. I opened the dead man's knap- 
sack and proceeded to read his letters; he must have had forty or 
fifty, mostly from women in the State of Indiana. In one it seems 
he had been boasting about their great victory at Gettysburg. She 



—21— 

answered him and said : "You men in the army seem to consider 
it a great victory for the Federals at the battle of Gettysburg, but 
if you could only be at home now and see the widows and orphans, 
made so by the battle of Gettysburg, you would not consider it 
much of a victory." (The battle we had just passed through was 
the battle of Chickamauga, and, as well as I can remember, it 
was Saturday, the 18th of September, 1863. The Kansas, Illinois 
and Indiana men were in front of us, and they could stand killing 
better than any men I ever saw.) I was very much interested in 
reading these letters, but I heard some one on a horse approach- 
ing behind me. I turned around, and found it was General Hood 
sitting on his horse looking at me. "Well," he said, "you didn't 
get hurt!" "No, sir," I replied. "How did your regiment come 
out?" he asked. "We lost a great many men," I answered, "but 
I don't know how many." "Well, I am very sorry to hear it," he re- 
plied, and rode off. When the war commenced, Hood was ap- 
pointed colonel of our regiment (the Fourth Texas), and he knew 
us all by sight, but could not call our names. He was a social, 
kind-hearted man, but a little impulsive at times. He would often 
walk up to me and shake hands with me and talk to me, but never 
knew my name. He was different from most of the old army 
officers. He recognized the fact that most of the men in the Con- 
federate army were good, respectable citizens at home, and that 
it was public spirit and sense of duty that caused them to be there. 
General Hood could get order out of confusion on a battle-field in 
less time and apparently with less trouble than any man I ever 
saw. I can remember that there was an Indian who went out with 
us to Virginia ; the rattle of musketry he stood as well as any of us 
but whenever the artillery turned loose he would give a whoop 
and run like a. turkey. "Too much for Injun," he would say. At 
the battle of Seven Pines General Hood came along the line, and 
this Indian was guarding some prisoners. "What are you keeping 
those prisoners standing there for?" questioned General Hood. 
"Going to take them clown in the woods and kill them," was the 
reply. "No you are not going to do any such thing," said General 
Hood. "Sergeant,'' he continued, "take these prisoners to the 
rear." 

Saturday night, the 18th of September, at Chickamauga, we all 
lay down in line of battle. We could hear the Federals cutting 



—22— 

flown trees and building breastworks, and we knew that we would 
have to get up the next morning and take those breastworks re- 
gardless of cost, and with that vast army in front of us, and they 
behind the breastworks, we know that it was a serious matter. By 
sunup Sunday morning, the 19th, we were in line of battle. Gen- 
eral Longstrcet had just come up. and I could see him and other 
officers riding up and down the line, and I knew from this that 
we would soon have another big killing. About 8 or 9 o'clock the 
command was given: "Attention, forward, guide center, march." 
Jack Massie took hold of me and said : "You get by the side of 
me; when you fall I want that watch you have got on." Bob Craw- 
ford said : "I want his boots." We moved forward, and when we 
reached the first line of breastworks, which was composed of trees 
and parts of houses, the Federals were on the retreat. Shot and 
shell were flying in every direction; minnie balls could be heard 
whizzing through the air, and the roar of artillery was deafening. 
About this time I fell to the ground. This settled it with me, and 
I have no recollection of what happened after that. When I re- 
covered I was lying in a hospital tent. Wounded men were all 
a round me. I turned over and Jack Massie was right beside me. 
T -aid to him: "Is that you, Jack?" "Yes," he answered, "my 
leg's cut off; Tobe Riggs died a few minutes ago." They had cut 
Tobe's leg off, giving him chloroform, and he never woke up. I 
had no idea what was the matter with me; I was bloody, sick and 
nearly dead from thirst, and to say that I had a headache would 
not express it. I found that a minnie ball had struck me in the 
t<'in pie, in front of the right ear, and lodged in the back of my 
head. I turned to Jack and asked him how long I had been 
there, but I don't remember whether he said Tuesday or 
Wednesday, but believe he said Wednesday; I was wounded on 
Sunday. In a few days I was able to walk around a little. T 
could see muskets lying on the ground in every direction, and a 
pile of arms and legs, which had been cut off of men. I suppose 
it would have taken a wagon, and perhaps two, to have carried the 
arms and legs cut off of men on the battlefield of Chickamauga. 
In a few days I was sent to Richmond and, I think it was some 
time in December, the ball was cut out of my head. It was a 
delicate piece of work, a great deal of risk about it. Dr. Charles 
Bell Gibson, at the corner of Clay street and Brooks avenue, Rich- 



—23— 

mond, Va., performed the operation. Dr. Gibson was considered 
the finest surgeon in the Confederacy. Of course I was under the 
influence of chloroform and unconscious and knew nothing of 
what happened, except what they told me afterward. He cut the 
skin on the back of my head, found the outside skull bones broken, 
lifted the pieces of bone and found the ball, about one-half the 
length of the forefinger, lodged in the back of my head. He was 
unable to secure a hold on it with his instruments and was com- 
pelled to use a chisel and hammer. I suppose the old gray jacket 
and minnie ball can be found among the old war relics at Rich- 
mond today. It took about three months for my head to heal; 
Mrs. Oliver waited on me. She washed the hole with a syringe 
.and warm soap suds and water every twenty-four hours, for nearly 
three months; had to keep the place open so that it would heal 
inside first. The doctor said if it was let alone it would heal out- 
side in a few days and inflammation would set in and kill me. 
Mrs. Oliver, of whom I speak, I think, is long since in her grave. 
She saved my life several times, and my bones today would be in 
the sod of old A^irginia had it not been for her. She carried me 
through one long spell of sickness in the winter of 1861, and twice 
afterward, when I was wounded. And I am not the only Con- 
federate soldier she waited on. I heard General Hood say of her : 
"Mrs. Oliver, I have often heard my men speak of you in very 
high terms, and I consider it my duty to thank you for your kind- 
ness/' Our women have often proven themselves heroines in war 
as well as peace. I have often seen them, born and reared in 
luxury, who had never seen a wounded man before, pass through 
hospitals, waiting on the patients, and the sight of it would make 
them sick, but they would do all that it was possible for women to 
do. And today it's the influence of the women over the men that 
provides the comforts for the old Confederates in their declining 
years. 

By the month of March, 1864, I was again able to travel. Gen- 
eral Hood was now in Richmond. He lost his leg at Chickamauga. 
He wrote a very complimentary letter to the Secretary of War 
and said I had always done my duty and that I was worthy of pro- 
motion. The President endorsed the letter and said that "the 
within communication, and verbal assurance of members of Con- 
gress, convinces me of his fitness for promotion, and I commend 



—24— 

him to your kind attention," signed Jefferson Davis, James A. 
Seddon. The Secretary of War issued me a captain's commission 
and transportation west of the Mississippi river. General Hood 
told me "good-bye," and cautioned me about going inside the Fed- 
eral lines, that I might get caught when I least expected it and 
spoil everything. I crossed the Mississippi river and joined Gen- 
eral Price's army ; I found them at Prairie De Ann, Arkansas. 
I took part in a few cavalry fights, but this didn't look like soldier- 
ing to me, so, at the suggestion of General Price and Colonel 
Campbell, I joined an expedition to go into Missouri to get out 
some recruits for our army. Now this was a new business to me, 
and it is attended with a great deal of risk, but I had made so 
many narrow escapes that I had become perfectly reckless and 
never thought of danger or that I would ever see the inside of a 
prison. I think it was now July, 1864. It was raining all the 
time, and we were compelled to swim all the creeks and rivers. 
We went from one neighborhood to another and the men knew 
everybody, so all went well till we were near a place, I think it was 
Salem, Mo., or Rolla, I forget which. Here there were some Fed- 
eral soldiers stationed. We camped in the woods, and the next 
morning, about sunup, we started out to strike the big road, Dick 
Kitchens and myself in front. I said: "Dick, I don't like this 
big road ; let's get out of it." "We will leave it directly," replied 
Dick. Just then we came to a short turn in the road and were 
within forty or fifty steps of a lot of Federal cavalry, who were 
coming toward us. They began to pull their pistols on us. The 
balance of our men behind us heard Dick call out, "Put up them 
pistols; put up them pistols." We all pulled our guns, as the 
only thing to lie done was to run the bluff on them. Dick went 
right at them, with his pistol drawn, and they soon concluded 
that a good run was better than a bad stand and soon disappeared. 
Knowing that they would soon soon return with reinforcements, 
which they did, Dick said to us: "Now let's get away from here." 
Then it was a run through the brush for five or six miles. I lost 
my saddle hags, all my clothing ami papers, and fifteen hundred 
dollars in Confederate money. My horse seemed to take in the 
situation ami it was all I could do to stick to him: I kept in sight 
of Dick as I was a stranger in the country. Not a man in our 
crowd would have surrendered on any kind of terms; the Federals 



—25— 

could have taken vis in, because they outnumbered us, but they 
knew to do this there would be twelve or fifteen of them left on 
the ground dead or wounded, and none of them wanted to die. In 
those days the people of Missouri and Kentucky were divided in 
sentiment, some Union and some Confederate, and they were ar- 
rayed in deadly combat, and in the State of Kentucky they are 
still that way to some extent. In Missouri it is reported that the 
Federals would bum down houses and turn women and children 
out of doors if any of the men were in the Confederate army. 
This made the men desperate. I understood there was a heavy 
reward for Dick Kitchens and several men in our crowd. I then 
commenced to make propositions to get what men we could to- 
gether and turn back south ; when I fight I like to have some show 
for my life. But there was a trip to be made into St. Louis by 
some one in the crowd, and I was the only man who was not 
known to the Union people. It is not often that a man will tell 
anything that is liable to reflect on his character or good sense, but 
I always acted upon the principle that it was best to tell the truth 
and shame the devil. I consented, but I must say that I never 
did anything in my life with more reluctance. As General Hood 
said to me when we parted in Richmond : "Like all games of 
chance, if you are successful, you are all right; but if you fail, you 
are all wrong, and your best friends will doubt your loyalty." 
When I reached St. Louis I found people I had known all my 
life and some of them relatives. Of course I soon became recon- 
ciled, but the trouble Was that I knew too many people. I did 
what I agreed to do, made a trip over into Illinois, and shipped 
everything out on the railroad, and when I was making prepara- 
tions to leave a detective walked up to me and said the provost 
marshal wanted to see me. Well, I knew then that it was all set- 
tled with me. I was taken to the Gratiot street prison, and car- 
ried a ball and chain for six months, not knowing at what minute 
I might be taken out and shot. I had not been there long before 
seven men were taken out and executed to retaliate for something 
that General Marmaduke had done. I knew one of them, Jim 
Mulligan ; I went to school with him., I think, in Batesville, Ark., 
in 1854 and 1855. Soon afterward a man by the name of Livings- 
ion was taken out and hanged as a spy; then another man by the 
name of Smith. Of course I thought my time would come next, 



—26— 

but finally I was taken out and tried 1 by court-martial, charged 
with being inside the Federal lines, trying to pilot men out of the 
Federal lines into the -Confederate army, and shipping arms and 
ammunition through the lines. It was a serious matter with me, 
and about all the defense I had was on a line with the Irishman 
before the court for getting drunk and disturbing the peace. The 
judge said: "Now, Pat, are -you guilty or not?" "I don't know, 
indeed, Mr. Judge, till I hear the evidence/' was the reply. Not 
having any proof I was sent to the old penitentiary at Alton, 111., 
to be confined there until the close of the war. 

Now 1 am a convict, not entitled to exchange or parole. I have 
lost my citizenship and the respect of all my friends and relatives. 
After about nine months' confinement and hard living my consti- 
tution gave way and I suffered with congestion of the lungs. The 
doctor said the next spell would take me off. When I was re- 
leased from prison the Confederacy had about gone to pieces. It 
was all over — the chapters read and the story told. I have left 
out many incidents and names for want of a better memory and 
better opportunities. This all happened forty years ago, and I 
can only state everything according to the best of my recollection, 
and I have no further explanation to make. But I hope Ibis nar- 
rative is sufficient to show to the young men and women of our 
country and future generations what a horrible thing war is. As 
for the fate of John Wilkes Booth, who killed President Lincoln, 
it was something that the Confederates were not implicated in. 
Bob Hollway told me that when General Lee surrendered he went 
to his home at Bowling Green, Va., on the Bappahannock river, 
about fifteen miles below Frederickburg. He had only been at 
home a few days when a tobacco barn was burned down one night 
about a mile and a half from him. The next day he went over 
there and found nothing but a pile of ashes, which were sur- 
rounded by a pole fence, and in one corner of the fence was a pile 
of straw and leaves, and here he found an opera glass with the 
name of J. Wilkes Booth engraved on it. He took it home with 
him, and the news soon went to Washington and some officers came 
down and took it away from him. So that ought to settle the 
question. Another incident just after the surrender, Hutch Berry 
tells me that not being able to get back to Texas, John Duran and 
himself started out on foot to make their way down into North 



—27— 

Carolina, where they both had relative?. On the way they stopped 
near a place where there were some Federal soldiers camped. 
After some deliberation on the subject, Hutch went in at night 
and confiscated two good horses for John and himself to ride, 
and at daylight there was a good wide space between them and 
where they found the horses. At the last reunion of Hood's Bri- 
gade at Marlin, Texas, June 27th, Hutch told me that John has 
never settled with him for that horse. I noticed an article in the 
Cincinnati Enquirer of recent date, from Mrs. Longstreet, in de- 
fense of General Longstreet's conduct at Gettysburg. It is all 
honorable and right in the woman to try and defend the character 
of her husband, who is now in his grave. I was in General Long- 
street's command for a long time, and was under him in the Bat- 
tle of Gettysburg, but, as I can remember it now, it was a right 
busy time with me, going up that mountain, the Federal batteries 
shooting into the rock fence in front of us, rocks flying in every 
direction, the air full of shot and shell, and men falling all around 
me. I had no time to look around and see what General Long- 
street or any one else was doing, for I had all the business on hand 
that I could attend to, but my version of the matter from what 
I could see and learn then and afterwards is very different from 
the opinion that seems to prevail among good people today. It 
may not be correct and I have no argument now to make with any- 
body about it. As I have already stated, I was wounded at 
Chickamanga, sent to Richmond, and was there over five months, 
and General Hood was in Richmond at the same time. I often 
saw him and talked with him, and on one occasion, I think it was 
in the month of January or February, 1864, at General Smith's 
house. We had been talking over the battles of the war, when 
Gettysburg was mentioned. Not thinking it prudent to ask him 
any direct question, I said to him that it was always a mystery to us 
that if we had those hills to charge, why we were held so long in that 
valley. He hesitated a moment, and said: "Well, that was one 
place I went into with a great deal of reluctance, and I told Gen- 
eral Lee that I could put my division in there, and would if I was 
ordered to do so, and lose a lot of my men and accomplish noth- 
ing." This much I have a distinct recollection of, the balance of 
his talk was in a general way and I do not remember all he said, 
but I think he said that General Lee called a council of his officers 



—28— 

to discuss the situation. General A. P. Hill, who succeeded Gen- 
eral Jackson, proposed a general movement all along the line of 
all the infantry and artillery. General Lee said we were too late 
by about twenty-four hours for such a move as that. General 
Longstreet then proposed a flank movement. General Lee said 
that with that vast army in front of us we would not be able to 
protect our wagon trains, so they separated without any settled 
plan of action, and General Lee, after reviewing everything, de- 
cided to assume all responsibility himself ; but that took time, and 
that accounted for the delay. Whether that is correct or not, the 
most sensible view to take of the matter is that if General Long- 
street was guilty of disobeying General Lee's orders, it is strange 
that a man of General Lee's sense and ideas of discipline and 
good order never noticed it and did not make any complaint and 
have General Longstreet removed long before the battle of Gettys- 
burg, to say nothing about what happened then and afterwards. 
Pete Walton ays that what we don't know about history in this 
world is more important than what we know. But it may not ap- 
ply in this case. As for the cause of the war, we all know that it 
was giving to the general government too much authority over the 
States without any regard for the interests or rights of the people 
of those States. Centralized power, or, in other words, an im- 
perial form of government, contrary to the Constitution and sys- 
tem of laws handed down to us by our forefathers, when this gov- 
ernment was established, and now we have the vast accumulation 
of wealth in the hands of a few individuals at the expense of the 
masses, and this, with the evil designs of politicians, the want of 
office, its emoluments and luxuries, with the increase of poverty 
and crime, can result in nothing but riots, strikes, mobs and blood- 
shed and the final overthrow of the government. Common sense 
tells us this; the history of the rise and downfall of some of the 
leading nations of the world tells us this, but it is to be hoped that 
the people of our country, with all of its varied interests, will be 
able to understand this subject and overcome all these difficulties 
in a peaceable and legitimate way, live under one flag and one 
sentiment, and enjoy the blessing of liberty, peace and prosperity, 
with just and equal rights to all and special privileges to none, 
and the man from the State of Maine can walk up to the man 
from the State of Texas, shake hands, and say, "We are friends." 



TEN YEARS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



Before we start out on our long journey of nearly eight thou- 
sand miles, I want to say a few words by way of preface to the 
young men and women of our country and future generations, and 
if what I have to say is of any benefit to them I have accom- 
plished a good part of my mission. It is more or less natural in 
the whole human family to think that our lot is harder than any- 
body's, and that there is a better country somewhere else than 
where we are. And in order to gratify our curiosity and ambition 
for pleasure and profit we must go there, if possible. There are 
some countries that offer inducements and advantages over others, 
of this there is no doubt, but you will find more differences in 
people than there is in countries, and if all the evils or mis- 
fortunes that befall the human family were collected together and 
put into one pile, and then distributed equally between every man, 
woman and child in the world, we would soon find that we would 
be better off with the evils or misfortunes that naturally befall 
us than what we would inherit by such a distribution. And the 
same rule would apply in the distribution of wealth and the luxu- 
ries of this life. It would finally go back into its old channel. As 
some would say: "The money sharks get it all." But in reality 
it falls into the hands of those who are born with a better sense of 
financial and business methods. 

We start from New York on the United States mail steamer 
Advance the 15th of July, 1888. Put in at Newport News on the 
coast of Virginia to take on the mail and some freight. This is 
the last land we see in the United States, and for all we know the 
last that we may ever live to see again. The next port reached is 
the Island of St. Thomas, one of the Danish West India Islands, 
five days and nights out from New York; and like all the West 
India Islands, they are mountains in the ocean, and some of them 
devilish high ones at that. Now, you would be surprised to see 
the native women here pick up their baskets that will hold about a 
bushel, and the little time it takes them to put four or five hun- 
dred tons of coal aboard the ship at one cent a basketfull. We 
pass near the Island of Martinique. This is where they have so 



—30— 

many volcanoes, and you see so much said in the newspapers about 
it; it belongs to France. The steamer blows the whistle and the 
people waive their flags. But having no business, we do not stop. 
The next port reached is the Island of Barbadoes, about twelve or 
fifteen miies square, and 1 suppose 200,000 people on it. It lie- 
longs to England, and is garrisoned by troops. The next port 
reached is Para, the month of the Amazon, and the first port on 
the coast of Brazil, a city of something over 50,000 people, about 
eight degrees south of the equator, and we are now about 3500 
miles from New York. The principal article of export here I 
think is India rubber, sugar, rice, tobacco and fine timber. This 
is not the latitude for coffee nor cotton, as it is too near the 
equator. It would make fine, large trees, but the coffee beans 
would decay and fall before they matured, and the same way 
with cotton. Of course, the cotton would not fall off like the 
coffee, but it would lie a short staple stuff and only fit for mat- 
tresses, if anything. Now, from this explanation you can form an 
idea whether cotton can be produced in a tropical country or not. 
Another peculiarity about Para, they always have a shower of rain 
about 12 or 1 o'clock every day, and it's as regular as clockwork, 
and I don't think that anybody has ever been able to tell the cause 
of it. When people here make an agreement to meet for any pur- 
pose, they always say before or after the shuva; shuva is the 
Portuguese word for rain. So the days and nights are both cool 
and pleasant; you need a blanket over you at night, or you would 
not sleep very much. We lay here two days and nights about half 
a mile from shore. I see people going back and forth in small 
boats, but when I see the sharks coming up to the top of the water 
occasionally, I feel better aboard the ship, for they could turn one 
of them boats bottom side up if they wanted to. They don't look 
very handsome; the head seems to be the largest part about them. 
I was talking to an American who said he had been three or four 
hundred miles up this river, and said that he had seen cane 
seventy-five feet high, that would hold one quart of water in each 
joint, and the best water he ever drank. I have seen cane twenty- 
five and thirty feet high twenty-five hundred miles south of here. 
It might be of some interest to state that the ouly way you can 
tell when yon arrive at the mouth of the Amazon is by the muddv 



—31— 

water mixing with the ocean, for it is said to be about one hundred 
and twenty-five miles wide at the mouth. 

The next port reached is Mieanham, a city of about 50,000 peo- 
ple; not a very important point for trade, but is headquarters for 
the Catholic church. These people are all Catholics, and you see 
the likeness of St. John everywhere you go, and a word from the 
priest is the law with most of them. The next port reached is 
Purnambuke, or Purnambuico, as we call it. The native pilot 
comes out to meet us, as they do at all ports. Supposed to be 
100,000 people here. A natural rock wall surrounds most of the 
harbor, and the tide coming in and going out rolls over this wall 
and it can be heard a long ways off; the tide has just gone out, 
and I can see that the pilot in front of the captain's bridge is very 
much excited. But fortunately one of the passengers understands 
his language, and says to the captain: "The pilot says that you 
are drawing twenty-two feet of water, and the tide has just gone 
out, and if you don't stop this ship you will get on a sandbar and 
lose the ship and all the cargo. But if you will wait one hour 
until the tide comes in, you can then go into port in safety." "Oh, 
they ought to send some one out here that I can understand." "But 
the pilot says that if you expect to do business with these people, 
you must learn the language. You might as well be deaf and 
dumb as to try to get along in this country without being able to 
speak and understand the Portuguese or Spanish language." 

The next port reached is Bahia. This city is said to have a popu- 
lation of over 100,000. It's on a high hill, you might say a moun- 
tain, and it is impossible to see the city from the deck of the ship. 
It overlooks a bay that seems to be large enough for all the ships 
in the world. We anchor out in the bay, and some of the natives 
come aboard to help discharge the cargo; and, as usual, the mate 
on the ship is a very cross kind of a man. He says to one of them, 
"Boll that barrel around here." "No foz moll." "Moll the devil 
and Tom Walker, roll that barrel around here." No foz moll 
means, that don't make any difference, but as neither one under- 
stands the other, it's a stand-off. He then turns around to one 
of the Irish sailors and says, "Pat, take hold of the end of that 
rope." "There's no end to it, sir; the end has been cut off.'* 
That's another stand-off. 

The next port reached is Bio de Janiero, the capital of Brazil, 



—32— 

and a city of 800,000 people. It is down under the hills on the bay ; 
you can only see the top of these hills back of the city on a clear 
day, for they seem to reach nearly to the skies. You would be 
surprised to see the number of steamships and sailing vessels com- 
ing in and going out of these ports; and it seems that not one 
out of twenty-five carries the United States flag. I find that we 
are a great people in our own estimation and the United States 
is a great country, as long as we are in the limits of it; but when 
we get out of it we are small fry, especially in the matter of trade 
and commerce. I find that Brazil, from the best information I 
can gather, with a population of not less than 20,000,000, sells 
the world over $200,000,000 worth of produce annually; and the 
most of this vast trade goes to Europe, on account of restrictions 
in our trade regulations. 

The next port reached is Santos, the end of our voyage, and 
about G000 miles from New York ; the next is Paranagua, and the 
next St. Catharine. You will notice Brazil fronts on the At- 
lantic Ocean nearly 4000 miles, and nearly three thousand back — 
about the same amount of territory as the United States — but will 
support more people, because it's a more productive country and 
a better climate. Much of its territory has never been explored 
by a white man. Santos is not a very large place, and I don't sup- 
pose ever will be, on account of its unhealthy location. The popu- 
lation is about twenty or twenty-five thousand. As to whether it 
ships more coffee than Bio, I do not know; but it will always be 
considered one of the leading coffee ports of the world, as well as 
other export and import trade which is tributary to it. 

We start out from Santos to San Paulo, a distance of about sixty 
miles from the coast, and it is said to have a population of 150,000 
or 200,000, and about 3000 feet above the level of the sea. The first 
twelve or fifteen miles after leaving Santos is a low, flat coun- 
try ; then we commence to go up the mountains. Now, you would 
be surprised to see the cars go up these mountains at the rate of 
twenty miles an hour. We find stationary engines posted on the 
side of the railroad every three or four miles with wire cables at- 
tached, and in this way the cars are drawn up the mountains. 
But I suppose if one of these cables should break, we would go 
down this mountain at the rate of an hundred miles an hour, until 
we jumped the track. Though in all my travels on railroads in 



—33— 

Brazil I don't think I ever "heard of a serious accident, In our 
country, if a train runs off the track and kills and cripples fifty 
or a hundred people, the wreck is cleared away, the dead are 
buried, and wounded sent to the hospitals, and it's published in 
the newspapers, and that's the end of it. But I understand that 
if such a thing should happen in Brazil, every official connected 
with the road would go to the penitentiary for life; and for this 
reason, 1 suppose, we never hear of a railroad accident. I find 
San Paulo to be an up-to-date city, with all modern improve- 
ments; at least they seem to keep up with the tide better than most 
of the Latin race of people; and it seems to be the home of the 
wealthy and aristocratic element and as. fine a dressed people as 
you see anywhere. In this, as well as in other cities and towns 
of Brazil, you find soldiers as well as policemen; and if a wagon 
or buggy runs over anybody, you see a policeman on the street 
with his club ready to knock the driver off of bis seat, and for this 
reason people are seldom hurt on the streets. In our country it 
is just the reverse; it's almost an everyday occurrence for some 
one to be hurt on the streets of our cities. Here the rights of the 
people generally seem to be as well protected as any other country. 
I find some Americans here, but less than any other nationality. 
I find another thing that we are not prepared to believe, and that 
is, less feeling of fellowship among Americans you meet in a 
foreign country than any other class of people in the world. 

Our diplomatic and consular officers put in their time well and 
draw their pay; but I have never yet heard of them doing much 
for their country or people, or asserting their rights or making 
any effort to improve our trade relations, which is so much needed. 
These appointments are generally made as a reward for campaign 
services or some kind of favoritism, without regard for their 
qualifications or knowledge of the language or people. San Paulo 
is a junction of railroads and a distributing point for all branches 
of trade. We go from San Paulo to Campinas, a city of about 
35,000 people, and another junction of railroads, surrounded by 
hills, and not a very healthy location; but, like San Paula, trib- 
utary to many of the large coffee farms. We go from here to 
Santa Barbara. This is where the Americans settled soon after 
our Civil War. Most of the^i were from the southern States ; but 
not many of them are here now; some of them went back to the 



—34— 

United States, some died, and others after learning the language, 
moved to different parts of the country. There is good agricul- 
tural lands here and level enough to plow, and that attracted the 
Americans. But it is not a coffee country ; the people turn their at- 
tention mostly to provision crops and stock, hut a better country for 
stock is found in other parts of Brazil than this. I was not here long 
before I noticed about thirty or forty people going along the road 
on foot, and seeming to be in a great hurry, carrying a dead bodv 
to a graveyard on a stretcher. They take it by turns; that's the 
custom of this country. If they live twenty-five miles from the 
cemetery, they must go there, or to some place where the ground 
has been blessed by the priest. Then one or two days out of al- 
most every week is a saint's day: and they firmly believe that 
snakes will bite them or some serious accident will happen to them 
if they work on these days. 

It is my purpose to give you some idea of the customs and habits 
of these people, their methods of doing everything, the realities of 
life, and the general appearance of the country, its resources, 
climate and seasons. All from actual observation made in ten 
years, and in a plain, simple manner, and instead of commenting 
on reports from newspaper correspondents and others, I will try 
to add something to it; or in other words, commence where they 
left off. This, you know, is a progressive world, and as the people 
of other countries make advances in the way of modern improve- 
ment, these people try to keep up with the tide ; and it is well they 
may, for they have as much or more interest at stake, from the 
simple fact that they have more to do and more undeveloped coun- 
try than perhaps any other part of the world, and it will finally be 
a country of vast resources which will interest all classes of people. 
We are now at Santa Barbara, and it's the month of Septem- 
ber, 1888. I can hear something that sounds like the whistle of a 
steamship, and it's a long ways off. I find that it is a native cart 
— all wood, no iron about it — and will carry about 3000 pounds. 
The yokes are light; they use small poles and rawhide instead of 
chains, as we do, and from six to eight yoke of oxen; the axle 
turns under the frame of the cart instead of the wheels, and it is 
the friction of the axle under the frame of the cart that makes the 
noise. We see the driver going along* the road punching the oxen 
with a little pole that has a sharp nail in the end about an inch 



—35— 

long when they don't go to suit him, and says, "Bum, Oh, de 
arbar." Well, de arbar is their curse word and means, "Oh, the 
devil/' But an American woman who has just arrived and don't 
understand their language, says she never saw so many oxen 
hitched to a wagon in all her life, and they call them all de arbar. 
Another American woman, who thought she had picked up Portu- 
guese enough to get along, took her seat at the table of a hotel; 
she wanted a spoon to stir her coffee, and instead of calling for a 
kuyey. said she wanted a carvolly, or in other words, she wanted 
a horse to stir her coffee. Did you ever think of the disadvantage 
you labor under to be in a country where you don't understand 
enough of the language to ask for your dinner or a drink of water ? 
If you never did, you ought to try it once; you will learn some- 
thing. No difference how well you are educated in your own 
country, you are nothing here unless you can speak the language; 
and if you are over 50 years old, you will never learn to speak 
it or any other foreign language well. If you can speak Spanish, 
Italian or French, you can learn Portuguese, on account of its 
similarity. 

It is a notorious and well-established fact in the everyday walks 
of life, that where one man fails, another, under similar circum- 
stances, will succeed ; and this fact was plainly demonstrated in 
two cases which I will refer to. In the year 1865 or 1866 Charles 
Gunter came to this country from Montgomery, Ala., I under- 
stand, with more money than any other American, and from all 
accounts he was a good business man and a good trader in his 
own country. But here it was a new deal to him; he was too old 
to learn the language and the strange methods of doing every- 
thing. The result was he lost his money and died a pauper. 
While John Cole, a jolly old soul, and about 65 years old, came 
here from South Carolina. He was a farmer and a man that 
looked at everything in a plain, practicable and sensible kind of 
way, and nobody could get any money out of him until he had 
value received. He succeeded well and made money, but he never 
learned but one word of the Portuguese language, and that was 
"Star bum." Everything Was "Star bum" with him. "Star bum" 
in our language means that is all right. He was a good-natured 
kind of man, but a very profane man, or wicked man. Some of 
the natives rode up to his house one day and called him out, and 



—36— 

said to him in Portuguese, of course, that the dogs had run a deer 
through his cotton field and they wanted permission to follow the 
dogs on their horses. Of course he had no more idea what they 
were talking about than the man in the moon, but he yelled out 
at the top of bis voice, "Star bum, Senor! Star bum!" Well, they 
thought it was all right, so away they went on their horses through 
the cotton field, knocking the cotton off as they went. Now, what 
he said to tbeni in English would never do to repeat before a Sun- 
day school class, but as neither understood the other, it was an- 
other stand-off. He had one child, a girl, and left her in South 
Carolina. He had lost his wife. When the girl was old enough, 
she married, and she and her husband went to Brazil to pay the 
old man a visit. They had only been there about two weeks when 
she went to him one day and said, "Father, we want to go back to 
South Carolina; we don't like this country." He ripped out an 
oath and said all right. "I will give you $10,000 in gold if you 
will leave here and never come back." Well, that was "Star 
bum," for that was what they went after. The next year he sold 
out and went back to South Carolina, and only lived a short time, 
but he was nearly 90 years old. 

From Santa Barbara we go to Moggy Miram, Mooshe, as we 
would pronounce it, with a soft accent on the last syllable. This 
is anotber junction of the railroad. 1 don't know the population, 
but from appearances there must be 10,000 or 15,000 people here. 
Only two men here who can understand one word of our lan- 
guage. It is a great coffee country and wealthy people living in 
and around the place. From here we go to Penha., or Penya, as we 
would pronounce it, the terminus of one of these railroads. Here 
I see tlie first troop of pack mules I ever saw. It is their principal 
means of transportation over this mountainous country, where they 
have no railroads. You see almost every day fifty to one hun- 
dred pack mules with 250 pounds of coffee to the mule, or the 
same amount of merchandise, going along the roads to and from 
market, or to the railroad stations. With some difficulty, on ac- 
count of my not knowing how to talk, I find one family of Amer- 
icans here from the State of Mississippi. 

We go from here to Jackitinga in the province, or State, of 
Minas, or Menus, as they pronounce it. and by accident on the 
road T find Dr. James Warren, who came to this eountrv in 1865 



—37— 

from Nashville, Tenn. Think he said he was a surgeon in the 
Confederate Army, and find him a very intelligent and social kind 
of a man. He met me at the door and I said to him that I was 
an American, just arrived. "Glad to see you, sir, come in. I sup- 
pose you don't understand the language." "No, sir, not enough 
to hardly ask for a drink of water." "Well, I have been in this 
country so long and it is so seldom that I meet an American, I 
can express myself better in Spanish or Portuguese than I can in 
English.** Now, according to the custom among all classes of 
people here (in fact they look upon it as a mark of politeness), 
the gild conies in with a waiter and some coffee and cakes. You 
must drink coffee with them, light your cigarette or pipe and 
smoke; then if you don't know how to talk, you soon feel like it 
is better to be alone than in such company. We then talk a few 
minutes, his wife comes in, he speaks to her and tells her that 
I can speak no Portuguese. She makes a polite bow, and walks 
out; she is a native, and wealthy, has a large coffee farm, coffee 
mill, and sugar mill. They have four children, two sons and two 
daughters, all grown. Dinner is announced; we go in and sit 
down. The doctor and I talk, and they occasionally ask him what 
we are talking about. They seem to be very much interested, but 
don't understand us. Dinner is over, I bid the doc-tor good-bye 
and travel on to dackitinga. and find some American friends from 
Texas. 

This is nearly all a mountainous country, more timber on the 
mountains than there is in our valleys, and much of it is impos- 
sible to walk through, much less ride through, without a hack 
knife. The land is mostly red, or Terra de Kose, as they call it. 
If you find any open country you find more grass on one acre 
than you ever saw on ten in our country, and much of the tim- 
bered country the sun never shines on. No winter nor summer, 
neither hot nor cold. Not frost enough to hardly check the 
growth of vegtation ; the leaves on the trees green the whole year 
round. Drouths, snow and ice, and failures in crops is something 
that is unknown in many parts of Brazil. No muddy water; you 
never go five miles that you don't cross a beautiful, clear, running 
stream of water ; in fact, going from the United States to Brazil 
is like going out of one world into another. Nothing you see re- 
sembles anything vou ever saw before. Now, to further illustrate. 



—38— 

a ship is lying in the bay at liio at night; the moon is shining 
bright, and one of the Irish sailors says to another : "Now, Mike, 
do you suppose this is vthe same moon we have in the old country ?" 
"Oh, what in the devil are you talking about, man, it is a different 
moon altogether.'* Everything is different in this country. If 
I remember correctly, Frank Carpenter said, in speaking of our 
people who traveled over Europe every year for profit and pleasure, 
to say nothing of the vast amount of money they spend, that they 
could see more here in one day than they could in a month of 
Sundays in Europe. Well, I will just raise him a bean, and say 
a lifetime. I have often thought I would like to see some of our 
people here who think they have seen heavy timber, and see some 
parova trees and logs that I have seen lying on the ground here. 
I think they would give it up. And then there are the different 
kinds of flowers, fruits, animals, and birds that you see in the 
virgin forest, that you see in no other country. Parova is a hard, 
heavy wood; the natives use it for lumber in building houses, and 
it seems to me it would be the finest timber in the world for cross- 
ties for railroads, for it is said one of these logs will lie on the 
ground for fifty years and then be as sound as ever. 

From Jackitinga we go to Sorocaba; about 8000 or 10,000 peo- 
ple here; then to Boituva. This is not a coffee country; it is 
mostly stock and provision crops. I see cows here larger than 
our beef steers, and the largest hogs I ever saw in my life; horses 
and mules about like ours. Sweet potatoes; you can sit down on 
one end and roast the other in the fire. Did you ever see a lizard 
four feet long? T think I have seen them five feet long. I was 
talking with a young man who came here from Alabama, and 
asked him if these lizards ever offered to fight. He said you ought 
to step on their tail once; you will find out then how they fight. 
He went on to say that when thase people cut down the timber 
and burn it off to plant, that leaves their holes exposed, and the 
boys put the dogs after them and cut him off from his hole, and 
he backs himself up against a log, and if he ever hits the dog one 
lick with his tail, he not only makes the fur fly, but makes the 
blood come, and that is the last time that dog will ever bark at a 
lizard, much less run after him. It is great fun for the boys, but 
it is rough on the dog. Tbe natives eat these lizards. The meat is 



—39— 

white and looks nice, and they say it is "Mouncha hum"; that is, 
very good. 

We stop at Boituva and make two crops of cotton. The first 
year we plant the seed, the next year we cut the stalk down, and 
make more from the stump of the stalk than we did from the seed. 
We make more cotton with less labor than we do in our country, 
but the grade is not so good as American cotton. We sell it to 
the factories at Soroeaba and Tatey at about 2\ cents per pound 
in the seed, and it is made up into the lower grades of goods. The 
seed seems to degenerate. The natives plant the seed every three 
years. I suppose further south the climate is better adapted to it, 
and will make a better grade of cotton, say in the States of Par- 
ana, Matagras, and Rio Grande de Sul. These people are making 
improvements in the culture of cotton as well as everything else. 
This is south of the equator, and the further south you go the 
cooler it gets. The coolest weather we have is in the month of 
July, and the warmest weather is in January. 

We go from Boituva to Botucatu, now the terminus of the Soro- 
caba railroad, but it has since been extended to Bio Naova, with 
other branches running into different parts of the country. Botu- 
cato seems to have a population of 8000 or 10,000 and is a dis- 
tributing point for trade of all kinds, as well as a junction of 
railroads. Nearly all a coffee country and a great many wealthy 
people around the place, and it is mostly a mountainous country 
and red land. Occasionally you find a campo, or prairie, black 
land, well watered, and horses and cattle on it. 

We go from Botucatu to San Jao de Itatinga, or Etattinga, as 
these people pronounce it, and it is like many other parts of the 
country I have been in; it is almost a solid body of coffee farms, 
I never had any idea before that there was so much coffee con- 
sumed in. the world. I understand that the crop of Brazil amounts 
to about 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 sacks a year. Now, this, at say 
$15 a sack, then add the India rubber, fine timber, raw sugar, rice, 
tobacco, guano, and hides, you have an idea what Brazil sells the 
world, and with the undeveloped country will increase every year. 
I think you will find that we pay these people $50,000,000 or $60,- 
000,000 every year for coffee, and if we get anything like a rea- 
sonable share of this vast trade it seems to me that I could have 
seen more American goods here in ten years, but Europe con- 



—40— 

trols the trade of this country, as well as the banking business, 
railroads and factories. Italy furnishes a large amount of the 
labor. This is the situation and will continue to be until our 
Congress at Washington takes some step to negotiate commercial 
treaties with this and other countries, with such a uniform system 
of export and import duties as will compete with other countries 
in the matter of trade and commerce. But some of our mem- 
bers of Congress will tell you that if the United States 
had a Chinese wall one mile high all around it we would 
not suffer a day for anything, for we have everything we need. 
That would have been a very good argument one hundred years 
ago when the products of our country supplied the wants of the 
people, but it is different now, and with the increase in our popu- 
lation will be more so hereafter, and not only that, when you hear 
a man talking that way you can nearly always put it down as a 
fact that it is either ignorance or lie and his family are provided 
for in some way out of the public treasury. The best way to make 
a man show an interest or feeling of fellowship for his country- 
man, is to take his salary or money away from him, and reduce 
him to want or moderate circumstances; that will make him so- 
ciable when everything else fails, or at least he will entertain very 
different views. I have paid here 20 cents a yard for cotton goods 
that sell on the New York market for 5 cents; $2.50 for a fifty- 
pound sack of flour, and $3 for Collins' axes with handles. One 
of our twodiorse wagons, I think, sells here for $135, and one of 
our double-turning plows with trace chains and single-trees for 
$25, and hundreds of other things I could mention. But still this 
trade is not worth our attention. In this country the government 
issues the money direct to the people. In our country the banks 
issue the money and the government endorses the banks and they 
are called national banks. These people know but little ahout the 
arts of statecraft or politics, as we understand it. Like all the 
Latin races, their issues, if they have any, are about men instead 
of principles. They go through all the formalities of elections, 
but the officials put out the candidates. The Delegarda is the 
judge, sheriff, and district clerk. They have about the same 
road laws as we have. When a man dies, 18 per cent of his prop- 
erty goes to the government, and when real estate is sold the gov- 
ernment gets 6 per cent of the purchase money; so there are no 






—41— 

gtS&eral tax laws like ours. You seldom see the sheriff, tax col- 
lector, or candidates for office. The price of land depends upon 
the locality and convenience to market, from 40 cents to $2 an 
acre. The quality is about the same all over the country. Coffee 
is checked off twenty feet each way. 325 trees to the acre, and after 
it is 5 years old is valued at 50 tents a tree until it is 50 years 
old. Though it is considered a net income to the owner, all this 
time of say. one year with another, 30 cents or 35 cents a tree. 
The people have pastures for their cattle and horses and pens for 
their hogs, so it is not. necessary to have fences around their farms 
as we do. 

We will now change the subject a little; I want to tell you 
something about the custom and habits of these people. 1 have 
already said something about their Saints' days. The 25th of 
June with them is like the 25th of December with us: it is St. 
John's day. Sunday is like a Saint's day with them. Then they 
have their festivals. Among the Carboca, or lower class, you will 
see the men rig up their pack saddles with two large baskets on 
each side ; this they call a colgary. They put the children in these 
baskets. You see the women going along the road on foot before 
the pack horses, and the men on a horse behind; now they are 
going to a festival. The wealthy people all ride. They get to- 
gether in. the towns and cities, run horse races, play cards, fight 
chickens, send up skyrockets, and yell at the top of their voice, 
"Viva, A^iva visumhora de arbar"; they run the devil out of the 
country so the corn and beans will come up and coffee will make 
more. They drink "pinga" at these festivals, hut they are not 
much on the fight like our people. Then they are a very polite; 
if they meet you forty times in a day. they speak to you, and when 
they go to leave you they tell you, "Bum tellogger," or good-bye. 

I will now tell you how these people plant coffee as well as 
corn and other provision crops. If a man wants to cut down 
fifteen or twenty acres of timber to plant, he will go around and 
invite all his neighbors to a dinner and dance at night, festival. 
He will get two or three jugs of "pinga." or rum, some flour, 
meat, sugar, and rice and will pay them say, one milrey each 
in money. They appoint a day, and they all come in with their 
forshes and axes, fifty or a hundred of them, if necessary, and 
cut the timber down. This is in thv month of June or Julv. the 



—42— 

dry season of the year, and by September or October, tbe planting 
season, it's all dry and ready to burn, and such a fire as it makes, 
with the popping of the cane, I do not think any of our people 
have ever seen, unless it was a large city on fire. Then it takes 
five or six days for the ground to cool off. Then they go into it 
with their corn and pumpkin seed and carvidarys and punch holes 
in the ground and plant; this is all they do to it. and they make 
more corn on one acre of ground without hoeing or plowing than 
I ever saw in our country. Then after the corn is planted, if 
they want to plant coffee on the land, they check the ground off 
carefully with a chain twenty feet each way, and put up a stake. 
They dig a hole with a. grubbing hoe at these stakes about ten 
inches deep. Next the "fato," or overseer, on the place comes 
along and drops a. few coffee . beans in these holes and rakes a 
little dirt, on them, and lays some sticks over the top of the holes 
for shade; then it is four or five months before the coffee comes 
up, and until it begins to make limbs it looks like cotton. In 
two years they are waist high ; in three years you see a little coffee 
on them, but not enough to pay until they are five years old. All 
this time corn, beans and other provision crops are planted in the 
coffee land by the hands who treat the coffee. They commence to 
gather coffee in June or July, and finish in December or January. 
and they pay from 10 to 15 cents a bushel for gathering. They 
take a brush, broom, or rake and clean off the ground tinder the 
trees and strip the coffee off on the ground, and by the use of iron 
sifters they get the rocks and dirt out of the coffee, put it all in a 
pile at the end of the row, and when they have forty or fifty 
bushels the cart comes along, measures up the coffee and gives 
them a ticket. Saturday evening the bell taps and the boss counts 
their tickets and gives them their money, less what they are due 
the boss for provisions. Sunday they go to town, play cards, run 
horse races, get drunk, or do anything they want to do. Gather- 
ing coffee is not as hard work as gathering cotton. The natives 
often plant tobacco in the young coffee fields, and here you see 
the largest tobacco leaves you see anywhere in the world. Coffee 
generally blooms out in December, and the blooms and leaves re- 
semble a honeysuckle more than anything I can think of. It is a 
beautiful sight to see 100,000 coffee trees in full bloom; then if 
they have three davs without a hard rain and wind this will give 






—43— 

the bloom ample time to set on, and they get a full crop, other- 
wise the crop is short. Coffee generally makes a full crop one 
year and a half a crop the next. The cause of this I do not know, 
and don't suppose any one else does. If the boss comes along and 
finds an orange tree or lemon, or sweet potato vines in his coffee, 
he makes the hands chop them down — don't want them in his 
coffee. You often see an orange or lemon tree loaded with nice 
fruit dumped into the creek. The nicest fruit you find in the 
virgin forest is the "jackatacarba." It is black and slick and 
about the size of a hen egg, and sticks to the limb or body of the 
tree until it is ripe. Then there is the "almasha" and bananas, 
the largest you ever saw, and "buckichuse," or pineapples, as we 
call them. 

I never will forget the night of the 13th of September, 1892, in 
Brazil. They had what they call a "shuva de pedro"'; we call it 
a hail storm, but I don't suppose the oldest citizen ever saw any- 
thing like it. Of course, the people were very much excited, and 
some of them thought the end of time had come. The next morn- 
ing we could see the coffee was knocked off the trees and rolled 
in piles and some of it washed into the creeks and branches. In 
some places the yards were full of coffee, and I have no doubt 
there were coffee farms that lost $15,000 or $20,000 worth of 
coffee in twenty minutes. And the large trees lying across the 
roads in the timber made them impassible for some time. We 
could see signs of it in the coffee fields for twelve months. 

I will tell you what a "bish" is. It is an insect that looks more 
like a flea than anything I can think of; he gets under your toe 
nails or finger nails and lays an egg, and makes him a sack and 
hatches out some little "bishes." The next day if you don't take 
the point of your knife and pick him out he will give you trouble. 
To avoid all of this you must sweep out your house regularly and 
bathe your feet in warm water every night. If you don't know 
what, a "baranah" is, you would not be in Brazil long before you 
would find out. A green fly will light on you and get under your 
clothing and lay an egg on your arm, or some part of the body, 
and in a few days you feel something that stings like an ant, and 
they get to be troublesome, and I have seen Americans who had 
been in the country twenty years and never knew how to get rid 
of them. I had been in the country about four years when T 



—44— 

found one on my arm that was giving me a great deal of trouble. 
I rolled up my shirt sleeve and one of the natives looked at it and 
said "sparumpoke,"' or "hold on." He went into the house and 
took his pipe and ran a straw through the stem and came out with 
a live coal of fire and some amber out of the pipe stem. He rubbed 
a little amber on it and dried it with his coal of fire, and two 
applications made him deathly sick. He took hold of my arm and 
squeezed it out, and it was a little hairy worm with a large head. 
They get on the cattle and dogs, but horses and mules the hide 
is too tough for them. 

Those people are very liberal in the way of credit, but as a rule 
all classes have to pay their debts. In our country it is a hard 
matter to collect a debt from a man who owns no property subject 
to execution under the laws. It is different here. If a man be- 
comes dissatisfied where he is at work and goes to some other 
coffee farmer, the boss always asks him how much he owes at the 
other place. He tells him and says all right. He writes a note 
to the boss on the other place to make out his account and send 
it to him and he will pay it, as be has employed one of his hands. 
While there is no law to compel them to do this way, custom 
makes it right, and I suppose it will always be so in this country. 
Passports are not essential in entering Brazil, but it will always 
cost you a little t<> leave the country. As for the investment of 
capital, I don*t suppose that there is a country in the world, or 
ever will he. that offers more inducements and a better prospect 
for profit. There are no labor troubles, or labor organizations, 
and I don't suppose ever will lie. 

A> for what trade or profession has the best chance of suc- 
cess in a country like that, one of our lawyers would have no show 
without a thorough knowledge of the language and laws, and for 
one of our doctors to get a certificate to practice medicine, that 
is a difficult matter on account of the examinations he would have 
to stand ; but if he is a dentist and understands his profession, 
that will always be a good business here, for the prices they 
charge for such work he can afford to get some one to talk for 
him until he can understand what "Entra star pronta" means, 
or, come in and take a seat in the chair, all ready, and it don't 
take long to learn that. 

Our missionaries see to have a good time; they live well and 



—45— 

have nothing much to do. The natives are all Catholics and say 
they are needed more in their own country than here, but I am not 
very well posted about that business. 

This is a healthy country. -If you pay strict attention to the 
rules of health you will live to a good old age. I have known 
people to come here with consumption and get well, but with a 
case of rheumatism it is just the reverse. I understand an Eng- 
lishman about 75 years old came here; he was a telegraph operator 
and knew nothing else, and as English money runs all the rail- 
roads, factories and banks, he thought, of course, he would have 
no trouble in finding employment as soon as be landed. The idea 
never occurred to him that he would have to telegraph in Portu- 
guese, but they gave him a job keeping gate at some railroad sta- 
tion. If be had been an American he would have been compelled 
to go on some coffee farm to gather and hoe coffee or go back to 
England, if be could get back. 

We start back to the United States on the 26th day of May, 
1898, and leave Rio on the steamer "(T-alileo" the 4th of June. 
The war is going on with Spain. This is an English ship ; Amer- 
ican ships are all laid up, put in at Bahia for coffee and other 
freight. The next port reached is Purnambuke. We are drawing 
about twenty-five feet of water, too much to go into the harbor. 
We lay outside and the bargee come out. The ship had about 
25,000 sacks of coffee aboard, besides other freight. They lay 
planks down on this coffee and roll mahogany logs, guano, hides 
and other freight down on them. We put in at the Island of St. 
Lucia for coal, and land in New York the 23d of June, 1898, just 
nineteen days from Eio. 

I will now say, for the satisfaction of all who may want to know 
something about the expense of such a trip as this, that we never 
get too old to learn. When I went to Brazil J paid $435 in gold 
Prom New York to Santos for myself, wife, and son about 9 years 
obi, on an American ship, saloon, or first-class passage. Came 
back on an English ship, second-class, and from Eio to New York 
I paid $135 in gold, and I will say that 1 can sec but very little dif- 
ference between second-class fare on an English ship and first-class 
on an American ship, but to learn all this we must do like I did : 
go and try it. 1 think you will find that the $300 saved will be 
•of some benefit to you some time. The English people have more 



—46— 

system and order on their ships than our people do. Second- 
class fare on an American ship is like a pen. 

I understand that our people are making some improvements 
in this branch of business. I hope they are, for there is great 
room for it. June or July is the proper time to make such a trip ; 
then you are less exposed to storms on the ocean or epidemics on 
the coast of South America. If I was going to make the trip 
again, with my experience, instead of waiting in a hotel in New 
York three weeks, as I did, for the regular mail steamer for Rio, 
I would take the first good ship from New York to Southampton 
or Liverpool, second-class, unless I had money to throw at birds, 
and from there to Rio. As for your money, United States cur- 
rency is good at a discount, or you can put your gold into a belt 
and put around you, but either way you run the risk of being 
robbed on the road, or lose your money by some accident. Then 
you can get exchange in New York on Liverpool or London, which 
is good in South America, but remember that unless you have the 
original and duplicate, the first and the second, when you present 
it to the banks at Rio or St. Paulo, they will ask you where the 
second is. You tell them the second is in the hands of the bank 
at New York. They will say, how do we know but that the second 
has been presented and paid; we don't want it. Present the first 
and second and we will pay it. Everything is done on the old 
English banking system, and unless you have your exchange in 
that kind of shape, it is worthless in South America. I have no 
advice to offer any of our people to go to a foreign country, nor 
do I ever expect to, for that is a serious matter, but if I was young 
and had my life to live over and had the means to do something 
on my own account and knowing the country and methods of 
doing everything as I do, and was disposed to try my fortune in 
a new country, I would not hesitate to go to Brazil. It is not 
expected that this information will be interesting to old people 
who have fought the battle of life and are contented with their 
surroundings, and sensible of the fact that we get nothing out of 
this world except what we eat, drink and wear. It is intended for 
young people and future generations who are in a condition and 
disposed to try their fortunes in a new country. I have given 
them the facts, the advantages as well as the objections, and the 
difficulties they would have to contend with, and it is for them to 
determine whether or not they would better their condition in life 
by such a move. 






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